


Bullets

by Tom_Tomorrow



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Big Sister Maggie Sawyer, F/F, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt Kara Danvers, Hurt/Comfort, Kara Danvers Needs a Hug, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Lucy Lane, Supportive Sister Alex Danvers, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tom_Tomorrow/pseuds/Tom_Tomorrow
Summary: There are three bullets.Three.Kara knows there are three because that’s how many impacts she feels before she realizes that these ones aren’t bouncing off.... .... ..Kara’s dealt with Cadmus before.So she’ll be okay.Maybe. Maybe? Maybe.Maybe she’ll be okay.... ... ... ...The one where Kara makes a horrible judgment call.
Relationships: Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers, Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer, Kara Danvers & Lucy Lane, Kara Danvers & Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 19
Kudos: 324





	Bullets

“-Copy-... Do you copy-”

There are three bullets.

Three. 

Kara knows there are three because that’s how many impacts she feels before she realizes that these ones aren’t bouncing off and, through sheer muscle memory, blurs away from the eight more she sees whistling in her direction. 

Three bullets and she can tell where each one of them landed. 

The first went through her right hand, where she’d first felt the razor burn of pain, then numbness after trying Barry’s whole ‘catch the bullet and throw it back at them’ shitick that, turns out, doesn’t work when said bullet rips its way through flesh. 

Another is lodged in her thigh, Kara knows, when her superspeed falters and the world refuses to slow itself around her anymore as she folds out of sight and into a passageway that is dim and empty and free of the little, red sniper dot she’d noticed a little too late. 

But the last… the last one is somewhere in her chest. And that’s the one that worries Kara most when her back meets the hard wall and a warped center of gravity pulls her down as her legs buckle beneath her.

Because she can’t breathe. 

There’s not enough air. 

“Copy! Damnit-”

Every time she tries to inhale the air she knows she needs, it meets some impenetrable barrier.

Like she was in space. 

Not Phantom Zone space. Not when she was in the escape pod.

Instead, the space from when she’d brought Max Lord’s catastrophe up out of Earth’s atmosphere and had felt nothing but bone-crushing pressure from all sides.

That space.

There’s a static fogging her mind that she can’t quite seem to shake, heavier than the cacophony of the world that she struggles to tune out around her, but even with the succession of the last few events morphing into fuzzy, faded images of things that might have happened, Kara knows she’s not in space. She knows that she had been doing something with… with CADMUS. 

And Cadmus is… well Cadmus.

Kara’s dealt with Cadmus before.

So she’ll be okay. 

Maybe. Maybe? Maybe.

Maybe she’ll be okay.

The next breath the blonde tries to draw in also catches in her throat and Kara has spent enough time around injury to know what it likely meant and around Alex and the DEO Medical Brigade to know she should probably do something about it.

What would Alex do?

Every bit of her throbs like a raw nerve as she attempts to fold in on herself, not caring when the movement dislodges the salt brimming in her eyes and sends them rolling down the sides of her face in little streaks of heat and she tries to swallow but her mouth feels full of cotton, suddenly impossibly dry. 

Come on… think… What would Alex do?

Alex would tell her to try. Tell her to apply pressure, to stop the bleeding, to do something other than just lie there. So that’s what she tries to do. 

She tries and forgets that there is quite literally a hole in her hand, forgets until the numbness prickles away, giving in to searing, white hotness and recognizes the trembling torn, sinewy muscle of her right hand, tacky and wet, so thoroughly coated in crimson that it looks almost as though it doesn’t belong to her at all. 

Pain was a constant for Kara, a phantom ebbing and flowing with the tide. It clawed at her, scratched at her, burned under her skin until she wanted to rip it out, out, out, and even on the best of days settled at the base of her skull, ached there as a steadfast reminder.  
Pain was something Kara had learned to deal with, had learned to expect, over years and years and years. But this was not pain. 

This was agony.

There’s a curse preparing itself on the tip of her tongue, but like the air in her lungs, dies before it can even be born.

Maybe… she’ll be okay, Kara thinks detached, relinquishing any further attempt at evaluation, letting her head roll back to look at the ceiling instead, because she doesn’t want to see. 

She doesn’t want to know how bad it is.

Rao…

“Someone get eyes on Supergirl, now!”

She should have waited for backup. 

She should have. She should have. 

She should have waited until the entirety of the strike team was there.

Because it was CADMUS.

Of course they would have eventually found a way. 

And she needs to get back out there. 

If not to get away from the CADMUS agents that are certain to still be looking for her, then to warn the strike team, to stop them before they got hurt too.

Panic does try to rear its ugly head then, at the thought of Alex or the others getting caught in the line of fire, but it lasts all but a moment before it's beaten back by the cool and calm fuzziness that only blood loss can bring.

And Kara knows before she even attempts it, that it is futile. 

Her leg prickles with a painful kind of numbness, her hand refuses to let itself find purchase against the linoleum floor, and… and… she can’t breathe. 

It’s like trying to suck up oxygen through one of those coffee stirrers from No’naan’s.

And unlike the pressure on her chest, the darkness around her is the Phantom Zone.

It is claustrophobic and suffocating and makes her so horrifyingly aware of everything her darkening vision is stealing away from her as the other senses fight for dominance. 

Of the sweat and crimson running in and out her body, hot, cold, tickling and sticky, making her tremble and shiver… Of the air around her heavy and thick and sluggish and drawn out, like walking through a very thin kind of jelly. 

Of dissonant hearing. The calcified city water sledging through copper pipes, the harsh metal hydraulics of distant vehicle traffic, the distant ratatat of gunfire, of people talking, yelling, screaming, of her heart beat… beat… beating. 

‘-Northwest base unit is clear. We need-”

Everything. 

Everything and it’s too much. 

Too disorienting. 

Fluctuating between what would qualify as normal and superpowered. 

Not giving her enough time to settle into one. 

She’s going to solar flare, Kara realises numbly.

This only happens when her powers are about to blow. When there isn’t enough energy to keep them all going and her body has made an executive decision to divert what remains to more vital areas.

It meant that this was more than just serious. 

The thought doesn’t phase her like it should.

It should scare her. Terrify her. But it doesn’t. 

It only serves as another tick on her metaphorical doomsday clock. 

Because Kara’s been here before… more times than she cares to mention. 

Looking the end of it all directly in its eyes. 

At the hands of CADMUS this time, instead of an evil techlord or a WorldKiller. 

And through the darkness, a whiteness, pale and absolute, begins to creep in at the edges of the Phantom Zone black, and settles there, something horrible twinging, spastic and tight, in her chest, as it does. 

She should try… 

Alex would tell her to try…

But she’s tired… 

Tired in a way that isn’t normal.

Tired in the way that’s like... like dying.

Another futile breath fights for escape and fails once more.

She doesn’t want to die. 

To die in the line of battle was an honorable death, as much on Earth as it was on Krypton.

It meant eternal rest and eternal glory. 

Only one seemed particularly important right now, but she doesn’t want it. Not now. 

She wants Alex… or Maggie… or Kal-el… or Lena … or anyone except no one.

Anything except to be alone. 

But she’s tired.

Tired and so cold...

“Oh no you don’t!” 

Kara hears a voice say, louder and less tinny than the ones bouncing around her mind, and feels more than sees the rush of movement, as something heavy clamps down on the hole on her chest and her lungs remember for the first time in long moments that they have a job they’re supposed to be doing.

She rolls her head, no longer having the strength to lift it, squinting up into the blackness that slushes across her vision until the black-purple blur resolves into the shadowy features of Maggie Sawyer.

The olive-skinned detective is kneeling on the ground, one hand shoved against the mess that must be her chest, the other setting down her tactical flashlight, looking as pissed off as Kara’s ever seen. 

There’s a spray of already drying blood on her face, highlighting the beginnings of a black eye as she gets halfway through the movement of shrugging off her police jacket, and the gun propped up against the wall near them is longer than her usual service weapon. 

“I’ve got her.”

Maggie says quieter, dark eyes flitting over the blonde as a location rattles off into the air.

Kara’s brain fuzzes again, lethargic and underwater, as she watches the golden police insignia disappear into a ball of fabric. 

Her brain fuzzes and her vision fuzzes and her hearing fuzzes, and everything goes fuzzy, fuzzy fuzzy and the blonde gets the feeling that the other woman isn’t talking to her, unheard words flowing from the detective’s moving mouth like a heavy rainfall as Kara fights to gain back ground.

When did Maggie come in?

When...

A twinge of guilt pricks at her.

Because Maggie’s hands are shaking.

Maggie 'heart rate has probably never gone above eighty, steadfast calm in the face of fire’ Sawyer’s hands are shaking.

And maybe Kara could have done things more correctly if she knew Maggie was here.

She could have pretended, at least, to look half way okay. 

Tried to sit up more, made more of an effort to stop the crimson, downplayed the injuries as best she could. 

But now all she can do is sit there and conjure up an image of what the detective must be seeing. 

Her supersuit dark with the blood that should be in her, but isn’t. The crimson instead, slowly soaking through the fabric S of her chest, drenching what’s left of her hand, pooling underneath a leg she can barely feel. Nowhere else to go, but out. 

The flashlight lifts again, after the police jacket replaces the detective’s hand, and their eyes meet briefly for a moment. 

The detective’s eyes go wide with an understanding that hasn’t been voiced yet, flitting across the other woman’s features like an epiphany, then the flashlight is back down, throwing light against the wall instead, Kara’s eyes slowly adjusting until it’s just enough to see through.

And finally, finally she tunes back in.

“Jesus, Kara! What the hell happened?”

Maggie sounds angry. 

She also sounds scared.

Kara wants to open her mouth to defend herself, but the detective’s free hand is palming up and down her body looking for more bullet wounds and the pain from doing so is so electric it takes everything within her not to cry out. 

“I remember them saying at the briefing that this was a team effort! That we would go in together! Do you have any idea how monumentally stupid it was to go in alone? They could have killed you! I mean, what the hell were you thinking?”

Maggie’s demanding answers and Kara doesn’t know what to tell her.

She saw a threat in CADMUS. Decided to handle it. Like she’s done many times before.

Saw those bullets. Knew instinctively where they would land. And decided not to move.

Both, in hindsight, were horrible decisions. But decisions she made.

There is nothing she can say to justify it.

“Three bullet wounds that I see… One is a through-”

Maggie’s voice continues off to the side above her, but Kara ignores her in favor of tamping down on a new pain, glassy and uncomfortable, that bubbles up from her torso, lancing up her shoulders to settle at the base of her skull. 

Her chest twinges again, sharp and harrowing as she coughs, attempting to clear it, but it refuses, something metallic and coppery rising up into the back of her throat instead.

And when she swallows the glassy feeling still won’t go away. Neither will the aftertaste.

There’s another tick on her metaphorical doomsday clock.

Louder than the last.

Forcing the reality of what’s happening upon her again.

It’s harder to push away than last time.

That this isn’t just hurt. This is dying.

Rao...

She doesn’t want to die. 

But… But this is...

She wants Alex. She wants her mom.

“M-Maggie...”

Kara utters in a gasp, quiet and weak, convinced that most of her friend’s name disappeared into the air before it had a chance to reach her, but Maggie stops talking, face drifting back into the blonde’s line of sight when she can’t quite turn this time. 

When their eyes meet again in the dark, Kara worries the resignation behind her eyes will be recognized for what it is and she tries to put something there other than the soul-tearing numbness of her mind losing itself to the pain, but it must not work because Maggie’s head drops down, shoulders shaking with something the blonde’s pretty sure she's not supposed to see.

“Hey, you’re okay. You’re going to be okay, Kara. Alex is on her way and we’re going to get a med-evac and get you back to the DEO-”

The annoyance in her demeanor is gone, tone now low and gentle and shaky with realization, the detective likely having realized just how bad this was because they both know the truth. 

They’re too far— too far from the DEO, too far from more blood, from sunlamps. 

That she is losing too much blood.

That there’s a reason Maggie’s the only one here so far, because there’s a battle with the rest of CADMUS still going on outside this hallway.

“I… I-I’m… Imma s-sorry. ” 

Kara slurs, filling her lungs with air as best she can, but her words catch in her throat and the glassy pressure strengthens its hold as another metallic cough smothers the thought. 

“Hey, Hey, don’t apologize okay? I’m the one that should be apologizing, I shouldn't have yelled.”

The calmness behind her words is just as forced as her tight smile, but the blonde lets herself latch onto the aura of them, desperate to feel something other than hopelessness as the detective asks again for the medical-evac, then something about ETA, then- ‘fuck, this is a lot of blood.’ 

And Maggie leans forward, putting her entire weight behind the police jacket against Kara’s chest. 

The resulting spike of pain causes the blonde’s whole world to blink out of existence.

She blinks and Maggie is gone.

She blinks and there is darkness. 

She blinks and the world is on fire.

Until she’s in the place deep within her mind where her memories are nightmares and her nightmares are memories because it’s really all the same. 

It is always Krypton. It is always on fire. It is always people running. People screaming. Her mother holding her and telling her to get into the pod, while her father looked on behind her, with tears in his eyes, and she had never seen him carry that kind of emotion before.

If she stays in this world long enough, the image will morph into Mon-el crying as he steps into the very same pod that banished her for so many years or Alex in that tank or Sam as Reign begging not to die. 

All played out before her in painstaking detail.

Kara is helpless in that place and it's happening now, and she doesn’t want the pain of this on top of everything, so she remembers what J’onn always tells her, that ‘this was real, but it was not present’, gathers as much focus as she can and claws herself back up to the present.

"Kara? Kara, I need you to listen to me, okay? Please." 

Maggie is begging as Kara struggles to root herself in the now, forcing herself not to search for the fires that are still very real at the edges of her mind.

"I said I need you to hold this here for me so I can take care of your leg."

The detective has a hold of the blonde’s good hand and is trying to press it against the police jacket that’s leaking through, but all Kara can think is that she can’t hear.

She can’t hear.

She can’t hear the calcified city water sledging through copper pipes, the harsh metal hydraulics of distant vehicle traffic, the distant ratatat of gunfire, of people talking, yelling, screaming, or her heart beat… beat… beating. 

Nothing but her panting breaths and Maggie’s frantic words and the rustle of the jacket as the detective readjusts her grip.

And that's usually how solar flares happened, with a whimper not a bang.

"Damnit Kara, come on!"

But no matter how hard she tries, Kara can't make her hand stay and it falls to the floor, palm up in the puddle of blood, warm and sticky. 

She needs more air, with more air she could apologize, but every time she tries to move in the volumes of it her lungs demand, the attempt is aborted by a stab of pain that leaves her feeling desperate. One unimpeded breath is all she needs but it won’t come. 

“Please…” 

Maggie says again, but it is dark and as heavy as the pressure in Kara’s chest, and suddenly the detective goes rigid.

In a fluid moment, the pressure on her chest loosens slightly, and the blonde watches, light headed and woozy, as one of the smaller woman’s hands moves towards her gun.

It takes a long moment for Kara to discern what the detective’s heard as she fights the darkness slushing across her vision, but eventually she hears it.

The soft and steady sound of leather against tile. 

Footsteps. 

The safety clicks off of Maggie’s gun and the echo of it rings too loudly in Kara’s ears.

CADMUS bases were mazes. A mess of hallways and rooms that twisted and turned and threw sounds around even when it wasn’t being rattled by gunfire. So it’s entirely possible that there was someone coming for them or that it was only an echo from the many corridors above. 

If she had her hearing she’d know for sure.

The fuzziness that encompasses Kara urges her to ignore it, fighting hard against the tactical part of her that screams at her to do something, even if it is a false alarm. 

Line of fire. Line of fire.

Protect Maggie. Protect Maggie. 

She has to do something, but her head won’t let her think.

Air. Air. She needs air.

Air so she could focus.

“Holy shit!”

Someone, someone who isn’t Maggie, says, an almost deafening perturbed incredulity dripping off the words.

“I know. I know. She won’t stop bleeding. There’s a bullet in her thigh too, one in her- her- hand… but the one... “

Maggie’s voice is higher now, more frantic, and Kara desperately tries to pinpoint if that’s fear, if she needs to be fighting and wants that calmness back as it slushes into the colors that mush across her mind. 

“Jesus Christ! What was she thinking?”

Not Maggie sounds closer now, but the nervous energy that would prickle up her limbs, if not to bring her powers back, if just only to stand, to shield Maggie from this oncoming onslaught, to maybe get a few punches in, like it had in that elevator, like it had when she’d stopped the warship from sending Alex halfway across the galaxy, refuses to come.

The futility of it all, hurts more than the bullets did.

“Hey! Hey! Eyes on me. Eyes on me, right now!”

Not Maggie orders, a pair of hands different from the one on her chest pulling up at the lapels where her cape connects, forcing her to move a little from where she’s been pressed up against the wall. 

Kara pulls her eyes open like anchors from the sea, unsure of when she closed them, rewarded by a hacking cough and mouth coated in iron as the detective’s worried face slushes back into her vision, blurry but Maggie all the same.

The blonde could have sworn she’d heard…

“There we go… Now can you look at me?”

The voice continues and the blonde has to force herself to follow the order, letting her eyes slide and slide and slide across the spinning room of fading colors, until they reach their target, the stitched black threading of ‘Lane’ embroidered into the cloth-plate fabric of a DEO tactical suit. 

Lucy.

It’s Lucy.

The former Air Force officer’s smile is just as forced as the detective’s. 

“We’re gonna get you cleaned up and I need you to keep your eyes open. It’s not an option.”

It’s an order not a question, firm and unwavering, and before Kara can finish processing the statement a bright yellowish orb floods her vision, moving from one eye to the other. 

A penlight. 

And though the light moves away before the blonde can pull away from it, the inward whiteness remains to relinquish its hold on the edge of her vision, inching everso forward like soldiers fighting for land.

Rao…

Rao… She was so tired.

And her eyes roll away from Lucy, back up to the ceiling tile, watching the black borders twist and turn and morph in her hazy vision.

“Where’s Alex? How far?”

Maggie asks over the echoes of Krypton screaming and if Kara stares into the ceiling long enough she can see the flames. 

“Eastside Cargo Bay. Ten minutes. Ten minutes max.”

Lucy is threading something beneath the leg she can't feel anymore and the blonde wonders for a detached moment what it is exactly the Air Force officer thinks she's doing. 

It doesn’t take long to find out when a second and a half later whatever is encircling her upper thigh tightens, a few inches north of the gaping hole in her leg.

Inside her head, Kara makes all the noise she can.

She screams and thrashes and the fuzziness recedes a bit, replaced by red because it is pure and utter agony, flaring up strong and sharp with the movement, but on the outside, all she manages to do is tremble harder when she can't make her heavy limbs obey. 

“Here, put this on her arm.”

Lucy says, and there’s an exchange of something Kara doesn’t see as another twinge, spastic and sharp, catches in her chest.

The cough that follows is stronger than the last, sending out little lightning bolts of pain to every bit of her body and she chokes on a mouth full of blood when it ends, unable to force it back this time, and feels rivulets of crimson run past her lips, hot and syrupy, around hitched little gasps she can’t even control.

"No no no no! Come on, Kara, none of that." 

Trembling fingers smear through the blood on the side of her face, so much so that Maggie’s hand almost slides off as she tilts Kara’s head to the side for her so she won’t choke, and she wants to say it helps, but it doesn’t when the rattle in her chest sends more iron flooding into the back of her throat and with a spastic panic the blonde can’t breath for another reason.

“Turn her. Here, help me turn her.”

Someone says and hands are on her shoulders, tilting her center of gravity sideways as they bring her down to the ground.

The noise of protest comes out as a whimper, bubbling out thickly past blood that falls more freely, sticky and warm against her skin.

And she wants it to stop. She wants it too.

This doesn’t feel right. This doesn't feel right at all.

And the overwhelming panic she feels must show because the detective’s hand is on her forehead sweeping away the blonde that she knows must be wet and sticky against her skin.

“You’re okay, you’re okay. Just hang on for us. Just a few minutes. Just a few.”

A few minutes.

A few minutes.

Just a few… 

Kara latches on to the platitudes and tries to anchor herself to the warmth of them, even when she feels the world slipping away, the walls of her mind coming nearer, merging colors like a kaleidoscope, smothering everything that was even slightly coherent in her head.

Just a few…

Something cold and metallic presses up against her, begins snipping away at the fabric of the House of El, backwards pressure releasing the build up of crimson that had gathered there.

Just a few… 

But her grip loosens it’s hold on reality, the phantom tightening of her chest intent unraveling thoughts thoughts that go unfinished, slipping away from her reach. 

“She’s cold, Lucy, she’s cold.”

Someone says as Kara watches the colors slush up past her.

White. Orange. White. Orange. White.

She doesn’t think it ever snowed on Krypton.

But inferno in the flames it did.

“She solar-flared.”

The snipping has stopped.

And there’s a weird sensation of feeling, but not quite feeling the fingers probing around the bare skin of where the bullet must be.

Numb.

Numb like her arms and her legs and her everything.

Numb numb numb.

“What?”

“Her powers blew, it’s not letting her self regulate anymore.”

There's a heavy length of silence. 

So long that Kara can only hear the grains of sand falling through her fingers as she gets hollowed out by the numbness of it all. 

This wasn’t right.

This isn’t right.

“Did you see the guns they were carrying?”

Enough awareness creeps back in for her to recognize Maggie breaking the fragile silence,, her words underwater, almost washed away by the roaring in her ears as the sharpness of it all begins to ebb and everything becomes static again around the edges.

It feels kind of like she’s falling. 

It feels… It feels like...

Feels like a big whooshing feeling, like when Sam had pushed her off of the Baker Hugh Skyscraper.

“Yeah. Yeah… I did.”

The licks of flame are spreading on the ceiling tile, flickering and dancing as they blacken and charcoalise and cannibalize each other, reaching down to nibble on platinum-steel reinforced walls.

It’s hypnotizing to look at, even when it feels wrong.

Feels wrong because she can’t feel the heat.

Feels wrong because she can’t hear the crackle. 

Feels wrong, because next to her the other women haven't acknowledged it. 

She should tell them.

She should… She should...

“It isn’t… It isn't kryptonite.”

A beat of heavy silence.

And in the moment, Kara’s entire world continues to spin.

“I know… I know. If we had known… we would have gone about this differently.”

She wants to tell Lucy no, that this wasn’t anyone’s fault but hers, because her friend’s admission of guilt is so uncharacteristic of her and the statement won’t fit right in the image Kara has in her head.

There was no way they would've known.

She knew that CADMUS is power hungry. Knew that Lillian Luthor would give anything to pick her apart, then sell her to the highest bidder if she could. But at no point, even when they started beefing up their security, did she ever think it would be shoot to kill.

It’s not. It’s not. It’s not Lucy’s fault. Not Maggie’s fault. No one’s.

And the words are there. They are. They’re sitting on the forefront of her mind. 

But she can’t focus enough to find the energy to say them.

Shecan’tshecan’tshecan’t. 

Because it wouldn’t stop.

The room wouldn’t stop spinning. 

The crushing pressure from all sides won’t stop.

The numbness that’s everywhere now, won’t stop. 

It made her heart feel so heavy . . . like this world just didn’t fit anymore, like she couldn’t make sense of it, but it wouldn’t stop . . . it wouldn’t stop! 

Kara feels each breath rasp from her lungs, thick and wet with more blood than she can spare. 

Feels the grayish-whiteness invading her field of vision, pulling on her like quick sand, pulling her back out to sea. 

Feels herself floundering, falling, falling, falling and there is no sensation more terrible than the desperate reach for something tangible that isn’t there anymore, and she holds onto nothing and for a second she forgets, she forgets where she is.

The agony is fading, an agony so real that it didn’t seem possible, and she can’t… remember. It was so disorientating, so confusing, but she couldn’t – she just couldn’t –

Her doomsday clock bellows. 

And this is dying. This is dying. This is dying.

And is this what Sam felt?

The world slipping by her like grains of sand?

Krypton is still on fire. And has it really ever stopped?

People are screaming and the ground is shaking and her mother is kneeling on the ground next to her, while her father readies the escape pod that will launch her into the Phantom Zone for the next twenty seven years. 

‘It’s time to go,’ her mother says, ‘You have to go now.’

Except she doesn’t want to go. And she doesn't want to stay here.

She wants Alex. She wants her sister.

Alex is safe.

Alex would make everything okay.

She wants Alex.

She wants Alexalexalex-

Distantly, faintly, Kara is aware of someone speaking over her mother to her, of someone gripping her hand hard, though there's no way it could hurt.

Someone who isn’t her mother or her father or any one of the thousands of Kryptonians that died that day.

It doesn't fit the memory and she fights. 

“-ara! Snap out of it!”

There is no pain, when she feels her body shake, but the hand is relentless in it’s pressure, and almost instinctively Kara’s fingers twitch, trying to return the grip as best she can, the image of Krypton flickering and fading around her.

“Come on! Open your eyes!”

And underwater, she does. 

She opens her eyes and sees several Maggies at once.

There is only one real Maggie, the blonde thinks, but they blur in and out of her vision . . . one Maggie. . . three Maggies. . . one Maggie… then three Maggie’s, until they finally blurred back into one.

Krypton is gone. The fires are gone.

And there was only one Maggie bending over her, a hand pressing up against the blonde’s jaw, making her look up, and that was good. 

“I know you want Alex, Kara. And Alex is coming okay? But you need to stay awake for us. So come on, pull it together!”

Oh… Oh… She hadn’t even realized she’d been saying that aloud.

Kara’s on her back now, no longer on her side, lying supine on the linoleum floor, and when they moved her, she’s unsure, but when Maggie let’s go of her jaw and her head tilts with the gravity she can see the small lake’s worth of crimson from where she was and the streaky path that came from moving her further away.

It doesn’t hurt like she would have expected it too.

In fact… nothing really does anymore.

She is fuzzy and she is warm.

And it shouldn’t feel right but it does. 

“Breathe with me, okay? In and out. In and out.”

Maggie demonstrates the movement and Kara claws on to what is left of her consciousness to follow the command.

In and out.

In and out.

In. Out.

In… Out… 

For a while, Kara matches her hitching breaths to the detective’s steady ones and tries to ignore the rattle that’s developed somewhere deep within her, and with every breath it seems like a little bit of her floats away.

“Evac is almost here. Alex is with them. Strike Team B has carved out an exit. Which means when they get here, we’re gone,” It’s Lucy’s head floating over her this time, distant and far away, as Kara reaches the absolute end of herself. “And that means you need to be awake when they come through those doors. Because if you’re not, I'll kill ya myself. Then Maggie will. Then Alex too. Don’t think because she’s your sister, she won’t.”

It’s meant to be light hearted, met to keep the mood from anything except what it is, but there are tears in Lucy’s eyes and none of the snark is there and all Kara can do is drift. 

Breaths come in shallow difficult gasps and they're slowing and the rattle is louder.

And drift… drift… drift…

“You’ve gotta fight.”

Kara can’t give them what she wants.

She’s tired and she’s warm and she can barely even see them as her consciousness begins to lift and disintegrate and give into the pale whiteness around.

Fight.

And everything goes dark.  
…. …. …. …  
It is dark as midnight and no one is talking and the world is heavy like a thin film of jelly as she slots herself back together, piece by piece.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

This is death.

She must be dead. 

She doesn’t feel like she’s falling anymore, so she must have hit the ground. 

And this dead and this is the afterlife.

Kara swallows as she drifts, and it comes easier than it did when there was blood in her throat, there isn’t anymore. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

She thought there would be more people here. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It is warm. Blissfully so. 

Warm and soft beneath her. Warmer still at her side.

Just warm.

Her teeth aren’t chattering, her muscles and bones no longer ached from freezing so long, and there is still residual pain if she breathes too deeply or thinks too hard, and that doesn’t sound fair.

If this is death, then it shouldn’t hurt.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Open your eyes.

She’s not sure why the thought crosses her mind, but there is nothing else to do as she wades through whatever, and feels so inclined to listen. 

She pulls the anchors from the sea, feeling the effort of it drain every ounce of strength she possesses, and opens her eyes.

The ceiling tile is white and isn’t on fire, and there are more white walls and white blankets, and a light in the light in the center throws muted white too.

The afterlife is a room of sterile whiteness.

She thought there would be more people here.

The ticking has given away to beeping.

Steady and methodical.

And Kara feels loose threads of consciousness tickling at the edge of her senses as she lets her  
eyes slide and slide and she drifts and drifts.

The sleek, pale DEO insignia is stamped on the wall next to her, in an unobtrusive way, almost obscured by the machines that tower over her and as her brain continues to defog, fragments of moment coalescing as she becomes more solid, she realizes the warmth against her is someone’s hand.

The blonde tilts her eyes, slow, slow, slow, so the world won’t spin again in the other direction and sees the hand and it’s owner.

Alex.

It’s Alex. 

Her sister's head cradles itself in the crook of her elbow that leans against the side of what must be a hospital bed and she’s not looking at her, instead at a television that spouts out things with weird, funky lines and numbers that Kara doesn’t understand. 

Next to her, the blonde makes out the woozy image of the detective curled up against the wall, eyes closed, clearly asleep, but hands free of the crimson that the blonde remembers earlier.

And behind them is Lucy, outstretched on an empty cot, arm tossed over her face, still in combat gear, as she draws in deep steady breaths.

So…

So… Maybe this wasn’t death.

She blinks several times, trying to understand where she is as the remnants of something of a terrible dream skitter into the corners of her mind, becoming indistinct. 

Ask Alex. Alex would know...and the next shaky breath, comes easier than all the others, even when it’s painfully slow.

“A-Alex.”

Kara whispers, and it comes out of her in a horrible croak, her throat raw and cracked. 

Alex flinches. 

Hard. 

The sudden movement sends a sharp pain down Kara’s side when the movement jostles the grip she has on her hand, but it’s welcomed because it confirms the fact that this might be real. 

Her sister’s face crests into view, shock then relief defining every feature in her face, but her eyes are bloodshot, and that means she’d been crying.

Kara hates it when Alex cries. 

“You’re awake. Oh my god, you’re awake. How are you feeling?” 

Alex’s voice is hoarse, so definitely crying.

Don’t cry, Kara wants to say.

She doesn’t. 

Instead, she thinks really hard about how she feels and settles with…

“Peachy.”

And her voice cracks, shattering into a thousand shards of little pieces.

There’s bandages on her hands, on her chest too, probably on her leg if she had the energy to look down.

She feels herself drifting as she looks back at the others.

Are they okay?

“They’ve been here for the last thirty-six hours. We all have.”

Alex says and Kara curls her hand harder around her sister’s grip, let’s it solidify there. 

"What happened?" 

Kara asks carefully as she shifts on the bed, and there is air blowing through something in her nose, but mercifully the pain stays silent for the first time since she can remember and she relishes the fuzzy medicated haze.

"What happened is we almost lost you," is the quiet answer she gets. "The sniper got you good, Kar. It nicked your lung, ruptured your diaphragm, went out through the back. And-and that was the first one. You lost an impossible amount of blood and your powers were blown, and w-we didn't think you were going to make it there for awhile."

It’s clear that Alex is two inches away from tears, the swelling of emotion obvious in every which way, and Kara doesn’t know if she can handle watching her sister that sad when it’s all her fault. 

“D-don’t… don’t cry.”

She whispers and Alex’s hand squeezes hers again, so hard that Kara’s sure that her knuckles turn as white as the room around them.

“As long as you promise, you don’t ever do that again.”

“Okay.”


End file.
